Rabbi Eleanor Steinman

Two-minutes of Torah for this week, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5CJyGbk4N0&feature=youtu.be

Two minutes of Torah are back this week. Click here.

Two minutes of Torah from yours truly, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=saY9vfZvAAw

There is something magical about Shabbat in Israel. The frenetic pace of the six other days of the week comes to a crawl, it is as though one can feel the angels of Shabbat descending upon this land. As part of the CCAR Israel convention, my colleagues and I separated and were guests of 13 Reform communities throughout the country. From Haifa to Gezer to Nahal Oz, we joined in prayer with congregations affiliated with the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism. 

  
I was delighted to attend Kehillat Halev in central Tel Aviv. We walked into the space, a senior day center the congregation rents from the municipality of Tel Aviv, and were welcomed warmly. Israelis from newborn to senior come each week to this congregation and bring in Shabbat with energy, kindness, joy, and amazing music. Rabbi Rotem offered beautiful words of Torah that spoke to my soul, stirring my own prayer, and from the feeling in the room, the prayer of each person. 

 

 
Children were sitting on the laps of their parents, quietly playing with toys on the floor, or being danced around in the arms of family and friends who are like family. 

The community uses a daf T’filah, a handout of the traditional prayers, contemporary reflections, and modern Israeli poetry. Music ranged from Taubman’s Hashkiveinu setting, niggunim, new Israeli songs, and traditional nusach. 

The service concluded and I was simultaneously sad and ecstatic. Sad because I don’t know when I will get to celebrate Shabbat with this community again. Ecstatic because this community exists, is thriving, and my soul was filled with the spirit of Shabbat. 

I hope you will join me in supporting the communities of the Israeli Reform Movement with our dollars and our Israel trips. 

And thank you to Kehillat Halev for a gorgeous Shabbat. I’m sending in my synagogue membership when I get home.  

Here’s two minutes of Torah for this week, click here. Shabbat Shalom!

We are trying something new at Temple Beth Hillel. Each week, Rabbi Hronsky or I will be presenting a video called two-minutes of Torah. Here’s the first installment, Parshat Terumah.

  
Dear Mom,

Tonight I lit a yartzeit candle in your memory. Somehow, almost inexplicably, five years have passed since you died on the 5th of Kislev. Five years have passed in the blink of an eye and in other ways so slowly. I still miss you every day. 

Facebook has this new “feature.” It lets you see previous posts from years past. While most of the time it’s funny to read, I need no reminders of the pain and sadness of your unexpected death. People’s words were generous and it was a reminder that even something as simple as a Facebook post can make a difference. I need to remember to be the one who writes those posts. 

Last weekend, MY SISTER and I went to Minnesota where we remembered you with MY DAD, family, friends and the Mt. Zion community. You would have loved it because you loved a party. So many people love and miss you. It made my heart full and my eyes tear. 

I miss you fiercely, Mom. I love you forever. 

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Blog posts from the past:

Four years-https://rabbisteinman.com/2014/11/26/four-years/

Two years-https://rabbisteinman.com/2012/11/12/730-days/

One year-https://rabbisteinman.com/2011/12/01/5-kislev-is-here/ https://rabbisteinman.com/2011/11/11/one-excruciating-year/

And here’s the dvar Torah I wrote on the occasion of MY MOM’s retirement in May 2010. Some of you might not have known MY MOM. This might give a taste of who she was. https://rabbisteinman.com/2010/05/28/happy-retirement-mommy/

20 years ago it was a Saturday. I was a junior in high school and was in the middle of my brief tenure as a cashier at the local drug store. I’d worked in the morning and I came home and my mom was sitting in front of the TV.

“Oh good, you’re home,” she said.

“Hi Mom.”

“You have to come see this. Yitzhak Rabin was shot,” she said as she pointed to the television screen.

I don’t remember too much of what happened afterwards beyond watching TV curled up next to my mom and crying. I knew that I was watching history unfold before my very eyes and I was so terribly sad. To my 16-year old self Yitzhak Rabin was a beacon of hope. I was preparing for my first trip to Israel that summer and was planning on visiting an  Israel that no one had known before, an Israel at peace with most of her neighbors.

My mom and I went to the Twin Cities memorial for Rabin, I think she saw in me my passion for Israel and the sense that her history-loving daughter knew that she was now living through a pivotal time. And somewhere in the recesses of my childhood room there is the newspaper from November 5, 1995, because for whatever reason I felt compelled to save it.

Today when I think about what could have been I get tears in my eyes.  And still I refuse to give up hope that Israel will know peace. Because that is one of the profound lessons I learned from Prime Minister Rabin is never to give up hope.